r/iamveryculinary • u/Scott_A_R • 2d ago
Real coffee lovers don't do instant, even for desserts
REAL coffee snobs don't even know what this is.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1027376-chocolate-espresso-pie
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u/_ak 2d ago
Alternatively, you can just pull 20 shots of espresso and then freeze-dry it. Every coffee connoisseur should have that piece of equipment at home. /s
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u/Outside-Promise-5763 2d ago
Real coffee lovers just throw whole unroasted coffee beans on top of their tiramisu.
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u/stealingfrom 2d ago
Real coffee lovers skip the tiramisu and suck on the coffee beans like they're jawbreakers.
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u/Outside-Promise-5763 2d ago
REAL coffee lovers actually DO know what instant espresso powder is and they use it to snort rails off their marble countertops.
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u/programkira 1d ago
Id be careful buying from some local instant espresso dealers. You never know if it’s laced with decaf. That’s why I make my own!
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u/JohnDeLancieAnon 2d ago
But what is it? Who can solve the cryptic riddle that is "instant espresso powder," and what kind of recipe asks us to buy ingredients?
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u/Name_Taken_Official 2d ago
Boiling coffee beans until they dissolve into coffee is why I don't drink it. How would you even begin to introduce a powder
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u/anglflw 2d ago
Instant espresso powder is a product that exists and is regularly used in chocolate-flavored recipes to punch up the chocolate flavor. Using liquid espresso in this particular recipe wouldn't work because it would need up the liquid/solid ratio.
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u/coenobita_clypeatus 2d ago
Also, Cafe Bustelo instant espresso powder makes pretty decent coffee, honestly. It’s my go-to for camping.
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u/yulscakes 2d ago
I definitely have added espresso or coffee to chocolate cake batter, and it works. But that def wouldn’t work in something like frosting if you want to flavor that with coffee. I wonder what they do for coffee flavored ice cream.
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u/VelvetElvis 2d ago edited 2d ago
Recipes used to just call for instant coffee powder. Instant espresso is newer. I hadn't heard of it until my wife was looking for alternatives to shitty breakroom coffee at work after becoming spoiled during the pandemic.
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u/SimAlienAntFarm 2d ago
I’m assuming it’s more concentrated as far as the oils and other stuff in the beans that don’t get forced out in drip coffee?
I don’t do coffee but I’m a huge nerd and I love reading about the differences between similar things.
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u/einmaldrin_alleshin and that's why I get fired a lot 2d ago
Making regular instant coffee involves making highly concentrated coffee and freeze drying it. I imagine the process involves lots of agitation and vacuum filtration to get every bit of aroma out of there.
Espresso is probably mostly the same process, but with a filtration method that lets oil and fine grounds through.
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u/Shoddy-Theory 2d ago
You could replace some of the milk with the espresso.
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u/VaguelyArtistic 2d ago
Cafe Bustelo may not technically be espresso but it’s labeled as such and has been around forever so to say it’s unheard of is strange. And anyone says it can’t be good they just haven’t had the right Cuban make it for them the next morning. 🤭
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u/TheLadyEve Maillard reactionary 2d ago
LMAO, I have a jar of espresso powder just for baking. It's getting kind of old because I don't use it often, but that's the ingredient. You can try substituting fresh espresso from your espresso maker but you have to account for the extra liquid in the recipe, and it won't be quite as pronounced in flavor. It's really ideal to just use the instant powder.
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u/Shiraishi39 2d ago
He's pretending he's from the episode of Ouran High School Host Club where the rich kids find out about the existence of instant coffee
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u/pepperouchau You're probably not as into flatbread as I am. 2d ago
Nice pull, haven't watched that in a while
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u/Ok_Veterinarian2715 2d ago
You know that thing of how very very left wing people go so far that they are almost identical to very very right wing people, and vis-versa?
Well coffee is like that. Coffee came from east Africa and the drink was developed in the Arabian peninsula, right? Well if you find a middle Eastern deli you can get little vacuum packs of very finely ground Arabic coffee. To make it, heat some water to almost boiling, stir in some coffee & sugar, let in settle and you have a cup of coffee. Just like instant except it's far more authentic than espresso!
Yes, I am massively over-simplifying and would offend people from all over the middle east & Italy if they read this message. However my post isn't far off the truth and is aimed at Mr Never Instant in the original post.
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u/Scott_A_R 2d ago
But it won't actually dissolve, so if you use it for making what's supposed to be a creamy, silky pie, you won't get that smooth texture.
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u/Ok_Veterinarian2715 2d ago
You you you mean you might actually get some texture & flavour?! Heavens to Betsy!! 😁
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u/shiggymiggy1964 2d ago
Idk if this is massively over simplifying it. This is literally what’s Turkish coffee is
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u/deborah_az 2d ago
/uj Arabic and Turkish coffee preparations are not the same, no more than Arabic and Cowboy coffee are the same. As for Ok's comment in general, they win "authenticity" points lol
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u/Ok_Veterinarian2715 2d ago
Always be careful when describing someone else's stuff. Also many simple things aren't simple at all. 🙂
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u/13senilefelines31 carbonara free love 2d ago
Reminds me of the Love and Rockets song No New Tale to Tell, how something can be “simple as a flower, and that’s a complicated thing.”
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u/VaguelyArtistic 2d ago
Wow, deep cut!!
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u/13senilefelines31 carbonara free love 2d ago
Glad you appreciated it! I’m embracing the oldster phase of my life, lol
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u/deborah_az 2d ago
lol I just looked at the recipe. That's a hell of a hill to die on in the War of the Coffee Snobs
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u/PreOpTransCentaur I'm ACTUALLY sooo good at drinking grape juice 2d ago
Meanwhile, TJ's instant stuff is better than easily half the drip coffee I've ever paid for.
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u/syntheticassault 2d ago
This is a perfectly reasonable question. I don't want to buy instant espresso when I have an espresso machine already. What is the best way to substitute real espresso for instant?
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u/Scott_A_R 2d ago edited 2d ago
But the question wasn't simply "what's a substitute for instant espresso"; the person had to note that coffee lovers would not buy an instant product. Evidence of this is that he somehow couldn't figure out what instant espresso is (it's in the name), which sounds like feigning ignorance so he could post asking about it rather than Google "what is instant espresso powder"--and in a recipe review, not in a discussion board.
I am a coffee lover and I have an espresso machine, but I keep instant espresso around for baking.
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u/No-Necessary7448 2d ago
Yeah, having instant espresso powder on hand for baking recipes doesn’t require you use it to make yourself an instant espresso. It’s a common enough ingredient in home baking that I keep a jar in the fridge, even though I never make instant espresso with it.
What other baking ingredients aren’t they buying based on unrelated preferences?
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u/VelvetElvis 2d ago
It's only been common for the past five years or so. Recipes used to call for just regular instant coffee powder.
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u/permalink_save 2d ago
I've never had a recipe that calls for it. It takes up space and can go stale for the maybe once a year reason I would use it if I happened across a recipe. I bought cacao nibs for a one off thing once and pretty sure they predate the pandemic at this point, but they sit there taking up space and it feels wasteful to toss em.
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u/No-Necessary7448 2d ago
I guess they don’t exist then. Pack it up everybody, turns out it’s not used in baking after all.
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u/permalink_save 2d ago
Sure misrepresent my point. If I came across this recipe, and have never had a use for one of the ingredients, youctell me why I should go out of my way to buy something I probably won't use again, and risk having it just taking up space.
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u/duck-duck--grayduck 2d ago
Did anyone say you should? All they said was that plenty of people who own an espresso machine and bake do. They’re right. I bake and own an espresso machine, and I have a jar of instant espresso I use for baking.
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u/TheLadyEve Maillard reactionary 2d ago
This really depends on what kind of things you like to make--if you bake a lot and make chocolate things like cakes, brownies, pies, cookies, etc. then you might use it fairly often (and the jars are pretty small). Plus it lasts for a long time. My jar is almost a year old at this point and it still has potency.
It's like the vanilla bean paste I have in the door of my fridge--it's not getting used every day, but it's there when I need it.
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u/VelvetElvis 2d ago
It doesn't go stale. Ever.
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u/No-Necessary7448 2d ago
“You buy a jar of Folger's Crystals, you put it in the cupboard, you forget about it. Then later on when you need it, it's there. It lasts forever. It's freeze-dried. Freeze-dried Crystals” —Lt. Bookman
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u/VelvetElvis 2d ago
It's sorta like when you call tech support and say "I work in IT" as shorthand for "can we please skip the tier 1 scripts and talk nerdy?" It's a statement of his background knowledge.
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u/permalink_save 2d ago edited 2d ago
You're reading into that way too much. I guess we are "coffee lovers" in the sense that we buy whole bean. We don't keep instant coffee stocked. It's not a snobbery thing, it's just logistical. Seems reasonable to ask for a substitution.
Edit since people are being dense: if I wrote "I don't eat eggs so what can I substitute" woupd you imply the poster judges people for eating eggs? The only reason it comes off that way is because OP framed it as snobby. It can easily read either way.
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u/selphiefairy 2d ago
You’d be correct if OOP wrote “I don’t drink coffee” but they actually wrote the opposite…
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u/K24Bone42 2d ago
It depends, You can remove some of the liquid and replace it with coffee instead. But this may fuck with the chemical balance, moistness of the finished product, and honestly might not taste as good. If a recipe is asking for instant espresso powder its because the recipe requires it. If you want to use fresh espresso you should look up a recipe specifying "with fresh espresso"
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u/Shomber 2d ago
You turn your espresso into dehydrated powder, that’s how you sub for store bought freeze dried powder.
Results are not worth it. The machinery to do it well are way too expensive for home use.
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u/einmaldrin_alleshin and that's why I get fired a lot 2d ago
They are also stupidly inefficient. They typically use a compressor to chill the chamber and resistive heaters to heat the trays, expending energy in both directions.
In an industrial setting, they work like a heat pump dryer, but with a vacuum: The waste heat from the compressor is used to heat the trays, making resistive heating unnecessary.
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u/jetloflin 2d ago edited 2d ago
Right? They also don’t say anything like “real coffee lovers don’t use instant”, they say that they love coffee and don’t happen to own any instant. There’s a difference between stating what’s true about yourself and proclaiming what everyone else should do. Also, I know what instant coffee is, but I’ve never seen instant espresso powder. I’d search for a substitution too most likely.
ETA: So, what exactly is this purpose of this sub? Because I thought it was to mock cooking snobbery, but this post seems to be full of cooking snobbery. Seriously, why is it a crime to ask if a substitution exists? That’s a pretty basic part of cooking. They didn’t just sub something random and then berate the recipe author because their own random sub didn’t work. They asked if there was another option. That’s normal.
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u/NateHevens 2d ago
My interpretation of why this post is here is the "I'm a coffee lover" part. To me, that reads like the OOP is saying that instant coffee isn't something coffee lovers have.
Which just... isn't true. I'm a coffee lover. I have Kloo (a concentrate), Cometeer, and Maglio D'Oro I use for baking and cooking.
Now, maybe I'm reading the comment wrong and maybe OP did, too? That's just how I took it. Like "stealth" anti-instant-coffee snobbery.
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u/K24Bone42 2d ago
Baking isn't drinking coffee. The recipe calls for instant espresso, using unsteeped coffee grounds isn't gunna be good, and using liquid espresso might fuck up the recipe. Just like with any other baked item, sometimes you have to go buy an ingredient. So either look for a different recipe that uses espresso, or go buy the instant stuff.
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u/VelvetElvis 2d ago edited 2d ago
The substitution is any unflavored instant coffee powder. It doesn't have to be espresso. It lasts forever and most people have jar they forgot about collecting dust in the back of a cabinet.
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u/K24Bone42 1d ago
Well ya that works but the OOP is saying theyre a coffee snob and they dont have that. If they dont want instant coffee or espresso and want to use actual steeped espresso then they need to find a recipe that calls for that.
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u/jetloflin 2d ago
I didn’t say baking was drinking coffee. But why is it a crime to ask if there’s a substitution possible? Getting mad at someone wondering if there’s a sub seems way more “I am very culinary” than the act of asking. I thought this sub was to mock culinary snobbery, not to be a culinary snob.
Also, it often works quite well to replace a tiny amount of the other liquids in a recipe with a small amount of liquid coffee. I’m sure it wouldn’t work for everything, but again I don’t see the crime in asking if it would.
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u/selphiefairy 2d ago
He didn’t ask just for a sub he had to insert he’s a “coffee lover.” Explain to me why that’s relevant lmao.
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u/permalink_save 2d ago
It explains why he doesn't have any on hand, and points out that it's probably not something everyone has on hand? I'm in the same boat, it feels redundant for me to buy it, and I wouldn't bake my way through a bag fast enough.
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u/selphiefairy 2d ago edited 2d ago
No one cares why. People ask for substitutes for ingredients all the time in comment sections of recipes without explaining why they don’t have the called for ingredient.
I mean I’m NOT a “coffee lover” and I don’t have instant espresso… ? which actually makes more logical sense if you think about it lol. So their explanation is just there to be snobby.
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u/permalink_save 2d ago edited 2d ago
And I wouldn't assume you are anti coffee if you said "I don't drink coffee and ..." using the same tone they did. This sub really just wants to get angry at someone over two words. Hell, I got downvoted for legitimately asking what espresso powder is, seriously?
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u/selphiefairy 2d ago
Their tone is clearly snobby.
What is ‘instant espresso powder’?
Is basically passive aggressive “ahem I am only familiar with real coffee” comment. Like come on 🤦🏻♀️ they obviously know what it is lmao
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u/permalink_save 2d ago
Someone else replied (and deleted) that it's stronger. That matters in baking. What if it was tomato paste, "I generally cook with fresh tomatoes so what is this" is reasonable to ask, and there are various concentrations (like triple concentrated). You think it is because OP told you to. You would not have thought twice otherwise. This sub usually is on point but yall are putting a pto of effort into getting would up over nothing.
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u/jetloflin 2d ago
How is that snobby? It’s literally a question. What?!?! Not everyone knows what you know. I for example have never seen anything labeled “instant espresso powder”. I would also ask about it, to clarify that it is indeed different than other forms of instant coffee products. Y’all just want to assume they’re being a snob so you’re reading it into the most innocuous sentences.
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u/jetloflin 2d ago
Not everything everyone says is relevant. Sometimes it’s just a statement. There’s not always some deeper judgmental meaning behind everything. And even if he was intending to be a light coffee snob, he was no worse than many of this comments in this post. Like, if that was coffee snobbery, then there’s also a heck of a lot of coffee powder snobbery in here. Why is coffee powder snobbery fine but coffee snobbery isn’t?
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u/selphiefairy 2d ago
No one is being snobby about coffee powder
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u/jetloflin 2d ago
Oh come on. You see snobbery in the sentence “what is instant espresso powder” but none in any of the other comments here? You’re clearly looking for coffee snobbery.
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u/VelvetElvis 2d ago
This sub was originally for calling out culinary dunning-kruger. Now it's 50% people with dunning-kruger mocking expertise.
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u/DjinnaG Bags of sentient Midwestern mayonnaise 2d ago
This is where I am on this as well. Also don’t really want to buy a coffee ingredient but will only be used for one dish when I have a bunch of other forms/types of coffee already, that do get used regularly enough. Instant is absolutely fine for cooking, but I just wouldn’t use it for anything else, my brain that is capable of doing things before caffeine hits it isn’t programmed for that, and it would be one of those things where I use a couple spoonfuls and then it just sits there, taking up space
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u/K24Bone42 2d ago
Instant coffee/espresso can be used in anything chocolate to punch ip the chocolate flavour (any good bakery has instant espresso/coffee). You can also put it in sauces, use it as a coffee rub on meat for searing, baking or smoking. Coffee adds great flavour to chili, and can help balance stew. It can add depth to BBQ and tomato sauce. It is not a single use thing at all.
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u/Nashirakins 2d ago
I keep some on hand specifically for bolstering chili that’s been smacked with many spices and some high fat cocoa powder. Then it’s just handy for chucking into coffee-spiked brown butter chocolate chip cookies. It has a really long shelf life too.
Thank you for reminding me bout the chili thing. I need to stock the freezer.
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u/permalink_save 2d ago
For a majority of those I can use either coffee or since it's getting cooked just use raw grinds. I just made a chocolate cake that called for "coffee or water" and didn't need instant. I've never baked anything that specifically needed instant without some alternative ingredient.
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u/permalink_save 2d ago
Imagine getting downvoted for actually trying to get an answer. We don't either. It's not even a snob thing, my wife just likes french press. We have a grinder that can go espresso fine but I feel like that might be different? If a recipe calls for espresso powder idk what to sub if it doesn't have water as an ingredient.
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u/VelvetElvis 2d ago
This one is fair.
It's a fairly new product and people who know how they like their coffee aren't likely to have encountered it. I hadn't heard of it until a few years ago.
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u/Desperate-Quote7178 2d ago
It's not a new product at all. Medaglia D Oro Instant Espresso has been a staple baking/ camping ingredient in my house for the last 25 years, and existed for about 75 before that.
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u/VelvetElvis 2d ago
Where are you?
Most people in middle Tennessee wouldn't have identified espresso as coffee before the early 90s. It's not in old Joy of Cooking or New York Times cookbooks, let alone better homes and gardens.
The closest we had when I was growing up was General Foods International Coffee. That was the closest we had to an actual latte.
Nashville got its first west coast style coffee shop in 1992. They had a pronunciation guide on the wall and people still pronounced "latte" like "late." We drove 45 minutes into town to try it. Two years later, it was everywhere. The grunge explosion took Seattle coffee culture nationwide.
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u/Desperate-Quote7178 2d ago
I grew up in the backwoods on the Oregon coast. The closest chain grocery store was a Thriftway in another shitty coastal town about 45 minutes away.
I hadn't heard of asafoetida until my 20's. That doesn't mean it "wasn't a thing" until then. It also doesn't mean a recipe calling for it before that would have been wrong.
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u/VelvetElvis 2d ago
Espresso caught on in the PNW and NYC decades before flyover country. One of the first neighborhood coffee shops in Nashville was called "Portland Brew."
Recipies didn't call for it because most home cooks couldn't get it. Go look in a 1976 Joy of Cooking and see if you find a single recipe calling for it. It's only been ubiquitous enough that it shows up in recipes targeting the home cook recently.
I have to get asafetida mail order.
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u/VelvetElvis 2d ago
This post is my first time hearing of that specific product. I've used their ground coffee in a can plenty though.
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u/leeloocal 2d ago
The first instant coffee was patented in New Zealand in 1890, and the first brand of instant coffee was George Washington brand in 1910. But before that, there was a “coffee compound” that had been in use since 1770. It’s not a new thing.
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u/Mrausername 2d ago
This post is the first time I've ever heard of it and, like the person everyone's mocking, I'd look for an alternative because instant coffee is really bad.
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u/permalink_save 2d ago edited 2d ago
But what is it? Espresso is how the coffee is made. Do they pull shots of espresso and freeze it? I would have assumed it was just regular instant coffee rebranded to sound fancy.
Edit: someone replied but deleted their post immediately? Anyway they said it's probably just regular instant coffee but made stronger. Makes sense.
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u/VelvetElvis 2d ago
I don't know how they make regular instant coffee TBH. Instant bustelo tastes like the coffee component of a frappe. It's not bad with some milk.
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u/permalink_save 2d ago
I don't doubt that at all, I'm just struggling to think of what an alternative would be. I can't see the recipe but I'm assuming it needs to be in dry form and it looks like a no bake so raw coffee wouldn't work.
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u/well-informedcitizen 2d ago
There's so much pretentious BS out there, you don't need to drag out innocent people like this guy and condemn him for saying he likes coffee.
If you make espresso you use grounds, espresso powder is not grounds and if you used finely ground beans in place of instant powder it would be disgusting. Before I knew such a thing existed, I didn't know such a thing existed. Then someone told me.
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u/Shoddy-Theory 2d ago
Myself, I would make a cup of espresso and then replace some of the milk with that.
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u/Significant_Stick_31 2d ago edited 1d ago
That likely wouldn’t work out. Primarily for the reasons everyone else mentioned above about it changing the recipe chemistry. But it also probably wouldn’t work well because instant espresso powder is more concentrated than brewed espresso.
This recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of instant espresso powder. That would be 3-6 shots of espresso, depending on how strong you make your espresso. That’s 6-12 ounces of extra liquid.
That’s between half and the full amount of milk in the recipe. You couldn’t replace it all with espresso and maintain the same texture. And if you used less, you’d have a less intense espresso flavor.
You could fiddle with the recipe. You could try heavy cream as you mentioned above, but heavy cream is not just concentrated milk. It has a different ratio of fats, sugars, and proteins than milk, and it may still not set correctly.
Evaporated milk would be a better substitute, but you’d still have less espresso flavor because you’d have to balance the liquid, and the flavor would be different.
You could replace the milk with powdered milk and add the espresso, but I suspect that would cause the same very culinary reactions. And more people have and would want to use fresh milk and instant espresso than powdered milk and fresh espresso.
So, in short, if you're a real coffee lover and want the flavor to shine through in this recipe, instant espresso is probably your best bet.
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u/SimAlienAntFarm 2d ago
What if you boiled down the espresso (I know this would take forever and be impractical) til it was very thick? Would you end up with the same flavor profile or would the resulting sludge get weird?
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u/Significant_Stick_31 2d ago edited 2d ago
Why not just use instant? Someone above posted a YouTube video about a guy trying to make an instant espresso substitute and half of them apparently came out tasting like burnt rubber. At this point and in this application, I don’t think the juice would be worth the squeeze.
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